


i can lead a nation with a microphone

by negativecosine



Series: i can keep rhythm with no metronome [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Quadrant Confusion, Species Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/negativecosine/pseuds/negativecosine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider's Moirail Quest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can lead a nation with a microphone

**Author's Note:**

> Last Actual-Story Part. (Everything after this is outtakes and porn.) Thanks to irrumatrix for the readover and cheerleading!
> 
> Warnings for: interrupted sex, pale infidelity and discussions thereof, inept humans trying to do quadrants, species dysphoria and a lot of discussion of body issues, repeated use of human terminology to describe alien genitals in ways that are not only inaccurate but also sort of self-flagellatingly dysphoric.

Okay, it is time to deal with your shit. 

You want to go to Rose first. That is always your first instinct, with pretty much all your really dumb problems, and it is maybe slightly possible that Vantas was onto something with his "you are in the BFF quadrant with your sister you dumb motherfucker" theory. That thought, however, is exactly what stops you from going to Rose first. Friendship is not quite _that_ magic today. Your cutie mark is just a big Comic Sans NOEP stamp. 

You go to Can Town. 

The going-to-Can-Town part of going to Can Town is actually sort of weird and distracting. You keep getting turned around in hallways, because your vision is pretty fucking acute in the dark, but your sense of direction's less... directional. Something. It takes you a while to figure out that following the scent of pumpkin is way easier than following any route you recognize visually. The Mayor greets you with his usual flourish and all-around adorableness, and lets you work on sprucing up the inner-city youth community basketball-and-also-don't-do-drugs center. It's a beautiful building, the heartbeat of the neighborhood, a perfect multicultural melting pot of green beans and carrot cans and also a can of some extremely dubious salsa. You ask the Mayor if he thinks the dubiousness of the salsa is racist. Can Town's Latino residents are an integral part of the thriving metropolis and you don't want to alienate them. The Mayor submits that honestly the green beans are more insulting to the Alternians than the salsa is to the second-generation immigrant family's teens, who are definitely all going to Ivy Can League colleges on full can scholarships if you have any say in the matter. You ask him why green beans are alien racist. He tells you, well, nothing, because the Mayor can't really speak English. Or Troll. He might have some weird carapace language that you're just not picking up on, but the gist of his intent is definitely that the green beans are racist because Kanaya is one of the green ones. You ask him how that follows. He suggests that you ask her yourself, and try not to be an entitled dick human about it. You remind him that you're not a human anymore. He looks sad and confused at you. 

Okay, maybe Can Town is not really helping you deal with your shit. It is, in fact, possible that Can Town is a way of distracting yourself from the shit you're supposed to deal with. A _clearly insufficient_ distraction, to be sure, and you leave Can Town a little growlier than when you arrived. Then you realize you are doing the thing, the Karkat Thing, where you wander around the meteor leaving emotional residue and solving _nothing_ , and this is clearly really fucking dumb, so you go try to find Rose and get it over with. 

You don't find Rose. 

Or, you do, but she is naked and upside down under her girlfriend. Which you really didn't need to see, and which is even more upsetting because you can't even muster an angry boner about it. Boners aren't even really an accurate description of what you would've gotten, and that thought just makes you angrier, and now you are wandering around leaving this slime trail of feelings, again, still. Still! 

Maybe Terezi can help. 

No. Terezi is sleeping. You know enough now to know that you do not fucking wake up a sleeping troll. Before all this stupid mess, you had a scar on your neck that you were weirdly proud of, from trying to wake Karkat for breakfast. He'd taken such a fast swipe at you, hadn't moved any other part of his body, just a flick from the elbow down to the wrist, and then you were bleeding and he was shouting and being melodramatic and stupid, and after you'd stopped the bleeding and convinced him that it was shallow and no he hadn't just murdered you, you'd been actually pretty pleased with it. Karkat had been tiptoeing around you for weeks before that, and just getting him to draw blood and get it over with, it was satisfying in a way you still can't really describe. It's not the hate-fuck quadrant, you know that- you don't hate Karkat, he's a tiny ragemuffin of stupid cute awful bullshit and you want to shut him up and you want him to not look so _hunted_ all the time, and you want him to fight you like he likes you. 

Terezi sleeping is way more dangerous than Karkat sleeping, because she goes without the slime. God and fuck knows why, the trolls are all psychopaths in their weird bug guts, really, but Terezi seems to be pretty intent on avoiding the stuff, even though according to the others it's pretty much necessary for Sanity Stuff. You have judged it to be none of your damn business what kind of gooey substances Terezi does or does not want to be covered in, but you have also determined that if you wake her up without the drugged slime, she'll hit an artery, not a vein. Probably all the arteries- she sleeps with the swordcane, sometimes. Not right now, though, right now she's curled up under that cape like a little pillbug, all her limbs and features tucked in. Something- something smells off, though, in the room you found her in. Not bad, just a weird smell, one you're not used to. You stand as far from her as you can, and try to inhale as quietly as you can, feeling like basically a total fucking freak for standing around sniffing the air in the room where you found your ex-girlfriend all crashed out. But, whatever, troll noses are a thing. 

It smells like a general Pubescent Troll Funk, which you have learned is totally fucking pervasive around here, and which you had definitely noticed as a human. What you hadn't noticed as a human was the different sorts of funk from each of the trolls- it is really hard to describe without getting into some weird synesthetic shit, and you are not fully comfortable with the likely cultural implication of thinking that Karkat's room smells red. In here, it smells like Terezi, and a little like you, and a little like Something and the Something sets you on edge, makes your horns itch, gets you all twitchy and ready to fight. You have some suspicions (there's an air vent in the corner) but you also have a deep fucking desire not to get involved with that shit right now. You have some idea of what Terezi's deal is, and some second-hand theories from Karkat that you wish he wouldn't tell you because Everyone's Weird Quadrant Shit is none of your damn business, and all your normal sane instincts are telling you to just _leave, just get out_ , only there is a very base, chemical feeling that, no, you should stay and call him out and fight until that gross clown is dead and not a problem for everyone anymore. 

Realizing, really noticing and fully coming to terms with the fact that you are still standing over a sleeping girl and seriously contemplating how best to murder her boyfriend, you just... sag. Your horn catches the wall, and it's loud and jarring, and you take that as your cue to abscond before Terezi wakes up. 

You go to your room. It smells like Karkat there. That's not going to work, because you have no sex juice left in your body to sit around smelling Karkat. You go to the lab, because it's nice and public there and smells like a sort of mild blend of everyone and doesn't make you want to kill anyone. But it's also really quiet and now you're stuck in your own skull and you get a little appalled at yourself. 

You try Rose again. 

She is, shocker, still having sex with her girlfriend. You know by now that they go for weird marathon tantric yoga sex, it takes hours, and you have no idea why anyone would ever want that. But you are sort of shaking, and your gut feels weird and tight and acidic, and you don't want to be alone. And you don't want to be near any air vents. And you don't like how hyper-aware of those you are. 

"Lalonde," you say, from the open door of her room. You are a gentleman, and have chivalrously averted your eyes from the kinky hump rumpus going on in the room. "I think I need quadrants with you." 

"Dave," she says, and you dearly, keenly wish that you did not have to hear her being all breathy and husky like that. Kanaya's making a low grumbling like you made when Karkat was- yes, troll sex noises, got it. Also you wonder briefly if Kanaya's got her chainsaw handy, but you refuse to glance over and check to see if she looks mad. "Can your issues wait just a-" 

"Rose I am going to kill a dude and I don't want to kill a dude, and I think, I really need to, to do some quadrants with you, the one specifically where you tell me not to kill people." 

Rose says, delicately: "Ah." Then there is a _really obscene_ noise and Kanaya vocalizes a little and you let your head sag forward to clunk against the wall. Your horns are taking a fucking beating today, between the floor and the other wall and this wall and the narrow doorways and it's all leading in to a nasty sort of headache, and you can't bring yourself to care. You stay pretty firm and face-first on Rose's wall until you feel her hand on your shoulder, and you really hope it is the clean hand, or that she had a towel somewhere or something. God, fuck, this is fucked up. 

"Should we go build a pile of, grubs and knives or something, how do we do this?" You spare a glance back at Kanaya, who is fashioning a truly elegant sort of toga/formal gown out of Rose's sheets. She gives you a pointed shrug, so you go back to Rose. 

"Would you like to sit in a pile of knives and grubs?" she asks, with her irritating therapist voice that always makes you want to play dubstep Rick Astley remixes on her speakers until they blow out. 

"Fuck no," you admit, and she nods knowingly.

"There's a nice couch in that room off the hall by the kitchen." 

"That couch is shit," you whine, but you know that she knows that that is your favorite shit couch on the meteor. Most of the holes in the armrest on the left side are worn through from where you fiddle with it while you ignore movies that Karkat makes everyone watch once in a while. You let her take you by the elbow, and even though you're currently a head taller than her and your body seems to consist entirely of rudenasty muscles and fuck-off sharp pointy things, she drags you effortlessly through the halls- she even does a better job than you do of keeping your horns from clipping on corners, god bless her. You're both entirely silent in the corridors. You're sure she can tell that you're mentally marking every single airvent you pass, but she doesn't comment. 

When you get to the movie room, she sits down delicately, and pats her lap. You glare at her- you're not Karkat and do not need to cry into her bosom, for one thing, and for another there's no way in hell you'll actually _fit_ on her lap. She huffs a little. "Alright, then, sit next to me and lay down or something, some friendly platonic contact will do you good." 

You hesitate just long enough to try and hold the barest shreds of your dignity around you, then flop down and kind of face-plant on her lap. Your horns narrowly avoid removing her entire fucking face, which is great, but now your nose is pressed right into the meat of her thighs and it smells like Kanaya. You are gutpunched with an overwhelming sense of shame and embarrassment- you just pulled your _sister_ away from having sex with her girlfriend in _normal romantic ways_ because you are dearly terrified of becoming a murderer. Who even does something like that? Assholes, that's who. 

"I'm an asshole," you tell Rose's thighs. Above you, Rose tuts softly and lays her hands on the back of your head, scratching very delicately at your scalp. If you were normal right now, you are pretty sure this would be part of a weird horrible version of straight chicken. Instead, it's just sort of nice, and makes the bases of your horns ache a little less. "I'm an asshole and no one is allowed to have normal lives because I'm going to come in and ruin it. And now I sound like him." 

"You do," she hums. Two years of continuous company, and you still sometimes can't tell when she's being sarcastic. "And you're both idiots, and you're not ruining anything but your own prospects. Do you want my advice?" 

"I can't handle your advice." Your legs are hanging off the couch, and this is actually really fucking uncomfortable, you are way too tall for this, and your shades are getting crushed into the bridge of your nose, and you really, really don't want to move. "Please touch my horns and then actually could you break them off and give me a tracheotomy with them because I hate them, they hurt and they look really cool and I keep hitting doors and this is all really terrible. You know what a nook is? Of course you know what a nook is, you probably invented them, it is a wonder you're not green to the elbows. Mine is red. My nook is red like. Like blood, like normal blood. Not your Vulcan girlfriend's blood. I have a nook and it feels awesome and I don't want it anymore." 

"Well," she says. She touches your horns, and you love her so much you want to throw up in her lap. You are pretty sure she loves you so much she would let you. You get really grossed out thinking that. "What don't you like? What would you like better?" 

"I want my dick back." She's scratching at the base of your horn, right around the back under the curly bit. "I want a normal-shaped skull, and I want to be able to scratch an itch without leaving my skin in bloody ribbons. But-" 

"But?"

"It feels good when he puts things in my troll vagina." 

"Yes, that's my understanding of the mechanics of that." 

"But it's not mine." You heft up, and very gingerly roll over so you can sprawl across her lap in a way that doesn't bend your knees the wrong direction. The horns don't sit right, so you have to sort of scoot up and the angle leaves your neck exposed, and something about that feels really wrong and weird, except it's Rose, so it's fine. You don't even flinch when she puts her hand under your chin, tickling lightly at the skin. There are so many switches in this body you just don't _know_ about; that's apparently the 'Turn all the muscles off' switch. Good to know. "It's not mine and it's not right and it's weird and I don't have a cool-sounding way to say that, okay, there is no handle, nothing is the handle to fly off of, that was always a stupid metaphor anyways." 

"Shoosh," says Rose. She pets your cheek a bit, and you are really disturbed to find that your face is wet. 

"I'm not crying," you tell her firmly. 

"You're most certainly not. Striders do not cry, it is absolutely uncool. It's raining in here. On your face." 

"Yes." 

"Your personal cool is so powerful it causes freak indoor weather incidents. Cold fronts and such." 

"I'm really mad that he touched your boobs," you say abruptly. She pats your cheek a lot harder. It's sort of like an affectionate slap, actually. You ignore the hint. "I'm mad at you for touching his face and I'm mad at him for touching your boobs and I'm also mad at you because you have got me _actually talking about feelings,_ Lalonde, I just used an I Statement and everything, this is really perverse." 

"He cried on my boobs. Is that really something you're jealous of?" She knows the answer to this, and when you glance up- well, when you glance up, you can see right up her nose, and you want to tell her that. You end up just making a valiant effort to frown at her, and end up looking sort of stoned. "Well," she concedes. "It was an emergency bosom-meeting. If Terezi was going through a rough spot- no, shoosh, I'm shooshing you- if she came to you and needed to be calmed down, you would do it, because she is your very dear friend and you want to help her. Karkat is my dear friend, and he is important to all of us, and if what he needs is to use my favorite shirt as a tissue, then that is what I will give him. Got it?" She's got one hand still on your cheek, and the other under your chin, and the leverage means she can make you nod. "Good. Now, tell me about this murderlust of yours." 

You squirm a little, but you're prone and can't really get away from her hands. They also smell like Kanaya. You can't make yourself care. "The clown one. In the vents. I can smell him and I found Terezi and she was asleep and I smelled him and he smells wrong and I want to kill him, which is the stupidest thing I have ever wanted, and I still really want a verified twitter account." 

"And you want to kill him because that will make him smell better?"

"He's a threat." 

Rose makes a little hum of acknowledgement and strokes over the bridge of your nose, nails clicking across the frame of your shades. "I'm taking these off," she warns you, and then does. You still don't flinch. You think maybe your body is incapable of flinching while she's touching you. It's a little irritating, in a weird way- you feel so helpless. 

"Kanaya is a threat, you know," she tells you, after a minute. "She cut her friend in half with a chainsaw." 

"That is really fucked up," you say, mostly because she seems to need to hear it before she can go on. 

"Terezi stabbed her friend through the chest from behind," she continues. "What Gamzee did- it's very bad, but do you think it's worse than what they've done?" 

Your throat feels kind of tight. "Are you asking me my objective moral judgement, Lalonde? You want me to be the arbiter of justice, here? Because that's kinda not my gig." 

"I'm not. I'm saying you don't have the, hm." She pauses to think, glances down at your eyes. You feel really naked. "You don't have the cultural or societal equipment to judge anyone on any defensible grounds. Your feelings towards Gamzee- that's protectiveness, that's an organic process, not an intellectual one. You don't _want_ to kill him, you _know_ he's not dangerous, and your base instincts are something you can master." 

"The lesson I'm taking away from this is that trolls are fucked up murderbugs and I'm, what, a person trapped in a fucked up murderbug body and that means I have to deal with all the fucked up murderrumpus with none of the exciting murderheartwarming payoff?" 

"Sometimes, when you talk, everything that you think is a word is actually not a word at all," she tells you, and puts a soft hand over your mouth. You let her, and refrain from biting her. "The lesson you need to take away from this is that you are Dave Strider, and Dave Strider is a person who does not sleep with people he hates, and does not kill people for smelling like someone left Woodstock in the refrigerator for too long." 

"Okay," you say, muffled. She gives you a little pat and releases your mouth. "So that means I can't let him play with my murdercooch anymore?" 

"I did not say that." 

You think on that for a while. Eventually, you doze off- you're still fucking exhausted, to be honest, and you feel too safe and relaxed to fight it. When you wake, you find that Rose has propped a paperback on your chest- the part of the cover you can see clearly indicates Trashy Alternian Smut, and she's reading with pink cheeks, chewing on a fingernail. She notices you looking, snaps the book closed and shoves it under a pillow with impressive speed, and hands you your glasses. You feel a lot less like murdering anyone, and when she lets you go you give her as quick and noncommital a hug as possible. She pinches your cheek and tells you to "go clean up the huge trail of excrement and ruin you've left strewn around the complex." 

 

The first stop is Terezi again. She's awake, thank fuck, you can't deal with Weird Sleeping Troll Issues again, but she's just where you left her, curled up around a little palmhusk device and texting rapidly. You plunk down on the floor a little ways away from her sharp-bits-of-things pile, wrap your arms around your knees, and wait a bit. 

"Coolkid," she says, finally, apparently finishing whatever she was doing. She doesn't look your direction- that's not new- but she doesn't take a deep sniff, either, and that's new. 

"Can you tell me quadrants again?" you ask without preamble. 

"Absolutely not," she answers without hesitating. "That is not in any of my many, many job descriptions, I am not a schoolfeeder nor any of the quadrants with you that would require telling you about quadrants, and also you are bad at them and there is no point." 

You stretch a foot out to prod at her pile. It seems to be mostly broken computers. "Come on, at least tell me why I'm bad at them? You're definitely qualified to lecture on that." 

She spares you a glance. Sort of. She angles her head toward you momentarily, anyways. "You've gotten a moirail," she says. 

"I've... acknowledged that I've had one of those for a while and we may as well call it what it is? Don't tell the tabloids, they can't handle two gorgeous blonds on the front page at the same time, the paparazzi's cameras will all catch fire." 

"What's a blond?" 

You remember that you are not actually a gorgeous blond right now, and feel briefly really fucked up about it before you shove that back down. "It's kind of like parents," you tell her. "So, okay, I can do one square, why's the rest of the hopscotch grid eternally doomed to shambles and the ultimate demise of the playground?" 

"You keep talking and all I hear is blah blah blah none of these words are words." She graciously uncurls enough to kick you in the shins a bit. 

"Yeah, I've been getting that a lot, lately." 

She just kicks you again. 

"Okay! Shit. I'm just saying, why is everyone saying I'm fucking awful at quadrants. They're the troll thing, the, you know, all your pity glands and your hate bladders right next to your shame globes and your murder sacs, right? I've got all the stuff, I should be able to do this _now_ , I had an excuse before, right, my human hate bladder was deficient or whatever." 

She stretches out her leg to get a pretty good kick in your gut. You kind of go _ooph_ and fall over, still cross-legged. Her ankle's right there, and looking super vulnerable and super attached to a foot that just kicked you, so you bite it. (If pressed, you would maintain that this would absolutely be a thing you would do with or without troll teeth.) She shakes her leg a bit without much complaint, and then just relaxes and lets you gnaw on her a bit. Her ankle is bony and tastes like sweat and skin, and it's tough enough that you don't break the skin. She takes the opportunity to get a good bit in while your mouth is full, which you guess is fair. 

"Oh Dave," she starts, and you have never heard a more sarcastic-yet-earnest 'oh Dave' from anyone ever, it has always been her special talent. "We don't pity with our pity glands and hate with our hate bladders. Or we do, because we practice it a lot and learn how to do it really exquisitely and hone our terrifying pity techniques with a lot of reinforcement from other people who are honing theirs. And we do it really, really badly, a lot of the time..." She trails off briefly, and you nip at her ankle harder to get her going again. "What? Oh, yes, your problems, let's talk about your problems. Your problems are stupid baby problems and you smell like nook and human-spit. You don't pity him because you don't need to, you very very dumb coolkid, I do not want to talk about this more." 

You disengage your teeth from her person, suitably chastened. "Okay," you say quietly. "So your-" 

"No, absolutely not." She kicks you roundly in the teeth, and _that_ actually hurts. Fuck. "My problems are coolkids and ventclowns and you cannot solve either of those things. Go do your moirail-quest, open all the chests and do the puzzles, we are done. Here, I am dropping sweet loot, I am the level boss." She tosses a broken circuit board- it misses your head, but clips the very tip of your horn. (You are certain that shit was fully intentional.) 

You abscond. 

You seem to be getting pretty good at that, lately. 

 

You walk in a lot of circles. Or, squares, really, spiraling labyrinthine squares around the complex. You pass Karkat's room five times. You know he's in there, because you've been everywhere else and unless he's crawled into the vents to be with his lost broloved, he is definitely in his room. You don't stop in front of his door, or raise your hand to knock, or anything like that, because it is cheesey in a way you can't feasibly sustain irony throughout. You go and find Rose in the kitchen, where she is studiously constructing peanut butter and honey quesadillas. You tell her exactly what you think of that ("That is disgusting, who taught you how to cook, a negligent alcoholic? Shit, wait."), and then you steal one and go to the observatory. 

("Gonna go cheat on you with your girlfriend," you holler on your way out. "That's not how it works," she hollers back. The quesadilla thing is delicious, and you scarf it on the way there, and all the peanut chunks get stuck between your fangs.) 

The observatory is a terrible place to observe shit. The telescope's busted, and even if it weren't you have no desire to gaze onto a noodly mass terrinasty horrigodheads or whatever. Shit's like a schoolgirl dropped a penny in the octopus part of town. Frisky appendages got no business cavorting like that. So what the observatory actually is, is a huge dark dome with a bunch of dusty science shit and no air vents. As far as you know, Kanaya spends way more time in Rose's room than here, but it's a pretty good bet that if she's not with Rose, she's set up shop here. 

"I'm here to cheat on my sister with you," you tell her, when you find her glowing dimly over a huge sciencey-looking table that she's covered in fancy fabric. Where does she even get fancy fabric? It is a mystery. 

"That's not how it works," she tells you, which pleases you- you had a personal bet going that they'd use the same phrasing, and you mentally hand yourself five dollars with a gentlemanly handshake. "You are, shockingly, allowed to have friends who are not your moirail. You are even," significant pause, "allowed to ask them for advice." 

"Can I ask you for raunchy bucketfucking advice?" you ask mildly, and get a nice kick out of how it makes her flush green. "Are we that tier of frenemy yet? Does sharing quadrants make us like in-laws and we have to tolerate each other's drunken ravings at Christmas and Thanksgiving, and secretly both bitch about each other to the same gossipy cousin?" 

"None of those things you said are words," she says crisply, still quite green. "Do you have an actual question, or are you just trying to scandalize me? It won't work. I have seen things." 

You wait for her to elaborate on things she's seen. She makes no indication that she has any intention of elaborating, and in fact bends over the table, carefully pinning some fabricy thing to some other fabric. Where did she get _pins_? 

"Things," you prompt finally. 

"Oh, yes. Things." She does something with what looks like a very small pizza cutter. Does she have her own private alchemiter? "Human Bucket Things." 

"Okay, well, I don't know if Rose has filled you in on the mechanics, but Karkat and me don't have any of the, what, human bucket things you're used to, so I don't know what you think you've-" 

"No, no," she tuts quickly at you. "I know about the penises. Dreadful bulge substitutes if you ask me. They look unwieldy. Is that what Karkat got? Poor dear." 

What. 

"What," you say, because your mind has sort of stuck on a little audio loop of Kanaya pronouncing crisply _I know about the penises_ over and over. 

"I have seen some human pailing-prompting films. The human method of manipulating the bulge penis is tragically primitive. They have to thrust their entire thorax to achieve any effect. Very poor engineering! I was just saying, it is no wonder Karkat hates it." She's finished with the pizza wheel, and peels off cut pieces of fabric that inexplicably all look violin-shaped. 

"They're not that bad!" you snap, before you can stop yourself. She looks up at you- you're finally as tall as her, and she's still hunched over a little. It's weird, seeing her from this angle. 

"I'm sorry," she says lightly, looking a little non-plussed. "Did you have one of those? I do not mean to denigrate your anatomy, it just seems very inefficient. I'm sure you will like the new system much better once you adapt." 

"I don't _want_ to adapt!" 

She sweeps the non-violin-shaped fabric off the table and straight at you, so it puddles at your feet. "Ah. Don't you," she says, and begins laying out the shapes in some sort of eldrich arrangement from memory, fussing and aligning. 

"No, I don't, and Karkat's problem isn't his dick, it's-"

She looks up at you sharply. "Yes? Tell me, if Karkat's problem isn't the anatomy's failings, what is his problem?" 

"It's not. What he wanted to have," you say, haltingly. You feel, very suddenly, like you're in school, being dragged ass-backwards through a math problem against your will. 

"And your problem?" 

"It's the same," you bite out, reluctant to give the right answer in fear you'll have gold stars inflicted on you. Dave Strider, everyone, let's give him a hand. Come on up to the class, Dave, let's put your homework on the board so we can all see what an impressive effort you put in. 

"Hm," she says, and sounds exactly like Rose in a slightly unnerving way. "So what was the pailing question you wanted to ask me? Since everyone involved has a problem with their genitals, their emotions, and the very basic mechanics of inter-species copulation, what did you want to say about that?" 

You sputter a little. She's blushing again, and won't look at you, but every syllable is clear and crisp. 

"The core concept, maybe? Is that what you are asking?" She looks up, and you silently nod. You're almost definitely bright red, and you feel like an idiot. "I learned this lesson very late, myself, you know. I had a lot of problems before I understood this. The core concept is, you need to know how you feel, and then tell the person how you feel, and then demonstrate it by putting your bodies together in whatever kind of arrangement is most mutually pleasant. Can you do all that?" 

You nod dumbly again. She's pinning the things together without looking, still watching your face. "Very well," she says. "Your moirail quest is complete, except for the final boss." 

"When did you even all get time to talk about this," you breathe, with the deep impression that basically you are surrounded by psychic murderers and this is why your shit is always being gently wrecked. She fishes a little glowing palmhusk out of her top. You sputter a little more at the sight of green glowing cleavage. You cannot deal with any of this. 

"Go drink something before you talk to him. You don't want to get dehydrated," she says. "I am not dropping any sweet loot," she adds, when you don't move. "That was a bad joke and we all want Terezi to feel bad for saying it. _Go_." 

You go. 

Well, you go drink some water, first, and then you really go. 

 

Karkat is still in his room when you go to check. He doesn't get up to let you in, so you let yourself in. He's cross-legged on the floor again- he's been sitting like that a lot lately, and it seems oddly fitting. At first you think he's reading, or something, and then you see, no, he is sitting there staring at the wall. That's healthy. 

"Hey," you say, and your voice does the chirp warble thing. 

"I unplugged all the husktops. Why is everyone trying to tell me where you are?" he says, still staring firmly at his wall-spot. 

"I had a moirail quest. I guess." 

He looks up at you stonily. 

"Can I sit?" You don't wait for an answer, just sit down between him and his wall-staring-spot. Now he can stare at you, which you're okay with. 

"You admit she's your moirail," he says, finally. 

"Close enough," you say, and shrug. He's glaring a hole through your forehead, and you catch yourself trying to wait and see if he even blinks. 

"So. If there was a, what the fuck, a quest, do we really need more game metaphors in our lives, you are all a bunch of psychopaths, why would you invite that fucking imagery into your- no, forget it. Did you deal with your stupid bullshit or not? Gog knows it takes you a committee of every snarky broad on this literal planetoid to help you find your own shame globes with both hands and a mirror, but-" 

"Yeah," you say quickly, because you can't both go on these dumb rants all the time, or nothing will ever get anywhere. 

You kind of hate how hopeful he looks, or how badly he's trying to hide it. His face is contorted into a bad impression of nonchalance, and it comes around to just sort of looking vaguely pained in a way that claws at you. "So?" he says, softly. 

 

"I don't hate you," you say, as straight-forward as you can. "I don't pity you." He's looking up at you, and going rapidly from neutral-displeasant-face to actually-distraught-face. You hurry to catch up with yourself before he flips out completely. "Those words mean something different, okay? Hate means you're too caustic to be worth my time, and pity means you're too low to be worth my time. I _like_ you, Vantas, I told you that. We're bros. Do you know what the bro quadrant is? Let me lay this out: I think you're a ridiculous piece of work, almost as much as I am, and I want to hang around you and listen to your dumb problems and watch your dumb movies and not tell you when your hair gets taller than your horns, and I want to spar with you and get my ass kicked sometimes and kick yours sometimes, alright. I don't want the BFFs quadrant because apparently that's what I've got Rose for and also if I ever see you crying again I'm going to fucking lose it, it'll be so fucking lost it'll be unrecoverable, like sunken fucking treasure and they haul it up to the surface fifty years later and make the world's _shittiest_ human movie for you to like-" 

"WHY WILL NO ONE SHUT UP ABOUT THAT," he interrupts, and he's doing the shouting thing, and it's completely unclear if he means the crying or the Titanic. 

"-No, shut up, I am talking, shut your huge shout hole for once because this is on the quiz and I am not saying it again, got it? I like you and I want to make out with you and I don't want it to be this whole stupid fucking quadrant drama thing because it's _stupid_ , it's dumb, your bug alien overlords are not gonna come for me on our wedding night and I'm not gonna carry you over any god damn threshold, this isn't life or death, alright, I like you _now_ and we are so fucking messed up right now, you don't get to make this any worse, alright? Just. Just let it be a thing." 

His face is sort of frozen in Shout Position, so he is staring at you like an asshole with his mouth open and his fat eyebrows up really high and he looks really, really dumb. You really want to kiss his dumb face. Instead, you ask, "You hate me, right?"

"Yes," he breathes, looking absolutely furious with himself for admitting it. His eyebrows are doing the thing, all furrowed and tense and he is going to have really ugly wrinkles on his forehead. Still, it hurts to hear it- you know, you _know_ that it's not the same, you just gave a speech about it and everything, but you want to kiss him and he says he hates you and that's hard to really make sense of. 

"But do you _like_ me?" 

"Yes," he snaps, and the sort of fanciful reverence snaps right out of his voice and he sounds like he is just tired of your shit. That's what you like best. "Of course I fucking like you, you-" 

"Nooksniffer," you supply, and he colors brilliantly. 

"- _piece of shit_ smart-ass, don't look fucking pleased with yourself, if I didn't like you I wouldn't have-"

"Oh," you say, and he shuts up quickly. He opens his mouth, then closes it. He tries again. 

"Did... did you not _know_ that?" 

"I mean, I sort of-" 

"Are you. Are you actually fucking brain damaged? Do those horns go all the way through? What is WRONG with you you IDIOT FUCKING HUMAN PILE OF BAD HORMONES AND PUNS, THAT YOU THOUGHT I WOULD, WOULD-" 

"-make me come so many times I actually passed out-" 

"- _TOUCH_ YOU IF I DIDN'T EVEN FUCKING LIKE YOU, WHAT _EXACTLY_ DO YOU THINK I AM-" He's getting progressively closer to you, apparently just propelled by the sheer power of his rage or something. You can see inside his mouth, you can feel his breath on your face. He's still shouting, and you've sort of tuned him out, because he's close enough to just-

You can't really kiss him while he's shouting, because he's got that wide-open comical cartoonish shouty mouth on him, so you knock your forehead against his. He shuts up really fast, and you can hear his teeth click when he shuts his mouth. 

"Today," you tell him, with your face right up against his, and he's all warm and a little sweaty and it feels criminally nice, "has been a long fucking day of learning new ways in which I'm an idiot, okay. I win, it's me, I'm the stupidest. I have been fed school, I have been schooled within an inch of my life, okay, I get it now. I do." 

So close to his face, you go a little cross-eyed trying to watch his expression, so when he screws up his eyes and lunges forward to kiss you, _hard_ , it's in double-vision, a dizzying kaleidoscope of angry Karkat steamrolling his way onto your lap and grabbing you by the horns ( _again_ ) to keep you close, or keep his balance. 

Either one is pretty much fine with you.


End file.
